Call It The Teabag Terror
Feb 28, 2010 Golden Memes, O'Neil's Law, Sunday Sermon, The Teabag Terror, The Teabagger Fail, alabama
Frank Rich says what needed to be said:
Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a “Tea Party terrorist.” But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner. That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stack’s credo — rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.
NO ONE should condone a man who burned down his house with his wife and kids inside, drove to the airport, and flew his PRIVATE AIRPLANE INTO A BUILDING. A commercial building, by the way, with 200 innocent Americans inside it. The first floor was mostly empty, but the IRS shared the upper floors with software companies and other private businesses.
Truthers and healthers alike have latched on to the killer as a hero. Republicans are flirting with disaster when they pander to this nonsense. This blog has tracked the strange dance on America’s right for a full year; last April, I predicted this moment in the right’s new permanent revolution. The teabag terror has emerged and the Grand Old Party is in its thrall.
We have seen this movie before:
But the internal dynamics are finally coming full circle as the establishment opens fire. POLITICO has an actual scoop for once:*
“I don’t believe we should be giving [extremists] a platform or empowering them to do anything based off their conspiracy theories,” said Ned Ryun, president of American Majority, “because they give the left ammunition to try to define the tea party movement as crazy and fringy.”
The attempt “to clean up our own house,” as Erick Erickson, founder of the influential conservative blog RedState, puts it, is necessary “because traditional press outlets have decided to spotlight these fringe elements that get attracted to the movement, and focus on them as if they’re a large part of this tea party movement. And I don’t think they are.”
Problem: They ARE a large part of the tea party movement. At least, the one that’s turning into a for-profit right-wing televangelism tour. Both the Tea Party Convention in Nashville and CPAC featured special wingnut training from folks like Andy Breitbart, Orly Taitz, and the Johnny Birch boys. RedState has apparently banned the birthers, but what about the freepers?
Which brings me to this discovery:
That’s the Rush Limbaugh of Huntsville taking on Parker Griffith.
Now I’m not saying there won’t be any tea party favorites elected in November, I’d say there won’t be many; and the reason why is plain to see in the strange career of Mr. Griffith, who in the course of one year transformed from an advocate of single-payer to a right-wing zealot. He has adopted every right-wing meme but the wingnuts are not impressed. Meanwhile, his opponent only has to point to Griffith’s record of achievement in office.
Remember O’Neil’s Law: all of politics is local.
The Teabagger Fail has begun…in Alabama.
*Maintaining my boycott of POLITICO links:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/33621.html
Inhofe Logic
Feb 27, 2010 James Inhofe, climate change
At Grist.com, Amanda Little has a revelatory interview with Sen. James Inhofe. Among the highlights: Inhofe says the United Nations and the International Panel of Climate Change are perpetrating a massive fraud.
And yet the ice melts…
Occam’s Razor never applies to the paranoid style of American politics. Rather than admit our massive global CO2 production is responsible for a warming trend, denialists would have us believe thousands of scientists, the Pentagon, NASA, and shadowy cabal of elites are plotting the demise of America. Teh Secret Evil Plan™ to install Teh Global Socializms™ is a Rube Goldberg machine.
Meanwhile, the Saudis are investing in solar.
Aquarian Global Warming
Feb 27, 2010 climate change
The South Dakota house has passed a resolution that school students should learn about “astrological” causes for global warming. You can’t make this stuff up:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Eighty-fifth Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the South Dakota Legislature urges that instruction in the public schools relating to global warming include the following:(1) That global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact;(2) That there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect world weather phenomena and that the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative; and(3) That the debate on global warming has subsumed political and philosophical viewpoints which have complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation of global warming phenomena; andBE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Legislature urges that all instruction on the theory of global warming be appropriate to the age and academic development of the student and to the prevailing classroom circumstances. (Emphasis mine)
“Theory” points to a close relationship between evolution denial and climate change denial. South Dakota schools are teaching all sorts of “theory” as fact, including germ theory and atomic theory. “Cosmological” and “astrological” demonstrate how science illiteracy perverts legislation. “Interrelativity” just shows off plain illiteracy.
But it’s when the shills, hacks, and mixed nuts get equal billing — “viewpoints which have complicated and prejudiced the scientific investigation” — that you see the true, evil genius of the denial industry is in presenting their pseudo-science as having equal merit.
And yet the ice melts:
Saturday Afternoon TV
Feb 27, 2010 Saturday Afternoon TV, progressives
Theodore Roosevelt and Progressivism
Jim Bunning Provides
Feb 27, 2010 Jobs Bills, republicans suck
My girlfriend’s mother is still recovering from her car wreck in December. She was due to start a new job the next day, but of course she’s now unemployed — and as a result of the accident, she will probably never work as a psychiatric nurse again. She depends on COBRA and unemployment during this period of transition as she seeks to go on disability at the age of 55.
Enter Jim Bunning, Republican Senator from Kentucky. He’s single-handedly holding back the extension of unemployment and COBRA and is very annoyed that doing so causes him to miss his basketball game. Waah! Never mind the 1.2 million American workers losing their safety net in the middle of a recession.
The “substance” of Bunning’s objection is that any extension of benefits should come out of stimulus money, which is a backhanded way of perverting spending decisions already made by Congress. We’re talking about$10 billion, which is enough to run the occupation of Iraq for about a week. Of course, the Senate will be able to override Bunning next week, but the delay will create turmoil — and extra costs:
Judy Conti, a lobbyist for the (National Employment Law Project), said that even when Bunning is eventually thwarted and the extension is passed, state governments will still have to deal with the extra administrative costs of shutting down and restarting the extended benefits programs.
“Once the program is retroactively reauthorized, the federal government is going to send the same amount of money, but his own state government is going to have to spend even more money,” Conti said.
“What happened last night was an absolute disgrace. There is a time and a place a purpose for debate on deficit reduction, but you don’t make your stand on the back of the unemployed. It is ill-informed, counter productive and just cruel.”
John Cornyn (R-Texas) spoke in support of his compatriot: “I admire the courage of the junior senator from Kentucky…Somebody has to stand up finally and say, ‘No more inter-generational theft!’” Cornyn said nothing about the $709 billion cost of the Iraq war that was charged to a Bank of China credit card from 2003-2008.
I said weeks ago that these were precisely the optics Democrats were after when they stopped producing omnibus jobs bills. Republicans are playing right into their hands. Bunning won’t be running for re-election this year, but the GOP is setting itself up for a big fall and he’s providing the perfect optics for campaign ads.
When asked to release his hold, Bunning replied “tough shit.” Stay classy, Republicans! You’re doing great!
Saturday Morning Cartoons
Feb 27, 2010 Saturday Morning Cartoons
Most Wanted Hack
Feb 26, 2010 Ten Most Wanted, astroturf politics, climate change
My Ten Most Wanted list of shills, hacks, and mixed nuts has a new member: Patrick Michaels, pictured on the right, is the energy industry’s go-to “climatologist.” Mother Jones has a thorough disposal here. My favorite section is the part describing his withdrawal from a major auto-industry case out of embarrassment over his funding sources:
As it turned out, Michaels’ attempt to keep his client list secret wasn’t entirely successful. The court documents reveal that lawyers for the defense saw records revealing that Michaels had received money from at least one very large energy company.
In addition, Greenpeace recently obtained an older copy of Michaels’ curriculum vitae via a Freedom of Information Act request that shows that the Western Fuels Association, a coal and fuel-transportation business group, gave him a $63,000 grant in the early 1990s for “research on global climatic change.” He also received $25,000 from the Edison Electric Institute, an association of electric utilities, from 1992-95 for “literature review of climate change and updates.” And a 2006 leaked industry memo revealed that he received $100,000 in funding from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association to fund climate denial campaigning around the time of the release of An Inconvenient Truth. Reporter Ross Gelbspan wrote in his 1998 book The Heat is On, one of the earliest works documenting industry funding for climate change skepticism, that Michaels also received $49,000 came from the German Coal Mining Association and $40,000 from the western mining company Cyprus Minerals.
The list is coming together fast. I’m even considering a separate domain. One thing that would have to be very clearly posted on each and every page: ANY news agency using any of these guys should be considered to have automatically failed its source-checking.
What Harry Reid Can Do
Feb 26, 2010 11-Dimensional Chess, Harry Reid, President Barack Obama, health care reform
Start the right conversation:
